Thousands
cast ballots
early at U
The on-campus early vote
center brought around 10
percent of votes citywide.

GENER AT ION

BY ISABELLA MURRAY
imurray@mndaily.com

As University of Minnesota senior Audra
Weigand planned her Election Day schedule, she noticed she was too busy to turn out
to the polls.
She remembered reading about a campus
early vote center on Facebook, and headed
over to use it a week before the general election. Weigand’s was one of about 2,800 of
votes cast at the early vote center housed in
the University’s Field House.
Contributing around 26,000 early votes
cast citywide, the center brought in the lowest turnout numbers of all four early vote
locations. Still, experts say the center’s presence on campus contributed to more students turning out than in previous midterm
elections.
“We wanted to try and reach out to the
student population,” said Minneapolis chief
elections official Casey Carl. “The motivation behind that was really driven by the
fact that, nationally, research shows the
younger demographic of voters, 18 to 30, traditionally ... have shown the lowest turnout.”
u See EARLY VOTING Page 4

FACULTY

Changes to U
leave policy run
into opposition
Some faculty have concerns
about eliminating the current
option for single-semester leave.
BY AUSTEN MACALUS
amacalus@mndaily.com

Proposed changes to the University of
Minnesota’s sabbatical policy will undergo
further review following opposition from
several faculty members in the University
Senate.
University officials put forth a revised
policy that would allow for faculty to apply
for a one-semester sabbatical at full pay, but
eliminate the opportunity to take a more
flexible single-semester leave. Some faculty
raised concerns about losing the benefit at a
Faculty Senate meeting earlier this month.
While a leave can be used for more general
purposes, a sabbatical is a period of paid
leave for staff and researchers that allows
them to conduct research, projects or other
academic work.
Under current University policy, eligible
faculty can take a full year or a one-semester sabbatical, both at half-pay. Colleges
may also allow a small number of faculty
to take single-semester leaves, which are a
more flexible option.
“What we heard throughout our consultation process is that that’s just not an
u See LEAVE Page 5

Z
ASHLEY MARY’S WORK HAS GOTTEN GLOBAL ATTENTION

MNDAILY.COM

A recent report found that
political events lead to more
stress and anxiety for Gen Z.
BY DYLAN MIETTINEN
dmiettinen@mndaily.com

A study released late last month
found that Generation Z, consisting of
those aged 15 to 21, is the most stressed
generation.
Recent events, including gun violence, climate change and sexual harassment, are major stress-inducing
factors that can lead to depression and
anxiety, according to the American
Psychological Association study. These
factors are often highlighted by the media, making it difficult to escape.
Experts and students at the
University of Minnesota agree that Gen
Z college students show significant signs
of stress.
Jake Loeffler, an outreach coordinator and staff psychologist for
the University’s Student Counseling
Services, said he’s not surprised by these
findings.
“The environment that we’ve created
is breeding depression,” Loeffler said.
Student Counseling Services has seen
an increase in students seeking support
this year, he said. Factors such as student debt and the implications of political events can lead to increased stress,
Loeffler added.
“Our work-life balance is really high
on the work side of things. And the student loan crisis is very real. That’s a lot
for students to manage. … You’re making a huge financial decision right out of
high school,” Loeffler said.
According to the study, much of the
Gen Z population feels an overwhelming

sense of disheartenment, not just about
their world, but about the future of their
country. 66 percent say they do not believe the nation is moving toward a stronger future.
In an effort to combat this, Jenna
Hovind, a junior studying microbiology,

“Everything that gets
reported on just makes me
feel like the world is just
such an awful place.”
CHELSEA COLLINS
University freshman

volunteers with Pet Away Worry and
Stress, an on-campus animal therapy program by Boynton Health. She does what
many her age do: try to decrease, in any
small way, the immense amount of stress
they feel.
Hovind agreed with the study’s

findings and blames technology for the
proliferation of Gen Z’s stress.
“At any moment, we can just Google
anything to see what’s going on in other
countries,” she said. “We feel pressured
to know what’s going on everywhere
at all times, and that can feel super futile when it seems like we can’t change
anything.”
Marla Krzmarzick, a freshman
studying electrical engineering, said the
stakes seem higher and the pressures
greater when the world is available immediately through a screen, echoing the
significance of technology and social media in the lives of Gen Z.
“Years ago, I think people stressed
about things happening immediately
around them,” Krzmarzick said. “Like,
I stress about the paper I have due next
week. But then there are all these awful
things happening in the wider world —
horrible, horrible atrocities. I feel like
there’s nothing I can really do about that,
and it stresses me out.”
u See GEN Z Page 4

ACADEMICS

University awarded grant to expand uncommon language programs
The grant will also help the
Institute of Global Studies
expand global studies courses.
BY CAITLIN ANDERSON
canderson@mndaily.com

The Institute for Global Studies is
working to implement a newly-awarded
grant to support the department and help
fund fellowships for languages that are
taught less frequently.
The $4 million grant is being distributed

to the institute over the next four years and
is being rolled out this semester. The U.S.
Department of Education awarded the grant
to the Institute to increase students’ knowledge of global topics and support language
programs.
About $3 million of the funding is going
to support fellowships that help students
studying languages less commonly taught
at the University. The funding will double
the amount of these fellowships awarded, according to a press release from the
Institute.
“It provides resources to develop new

courses and new pedagogies that wouldn’t
be provided otherwise,” said Evelyn
Davidheiser, director of the Institute for
Global Studies.
The institute is a National Resource
Center – a federally-designated center with
international programs within universities.
“This ... grant program has been around
for about 60 years and it’s designed to promote global competency knowledge about
other parts of the world and language capacity in the U.S.,” Davidheiser said.
u See LANGUAGE Page 5

ADMINISTRATION

Provost to remain in her role, provide
stability during presidential transition
Karen Hanson will be on
leave from January to March,
and then return on April 1.
BY HELEN SABROWSKY
hsabrowsky@mndaily.com

After a three-month leave of absence
beginning in January, University of
Minnesota Executive Vice President and
Provost Karen Hanson will return to her
role full-time April 1, straying from a previous announcement that she would leave her
role at the end of the year.
Hanson, who has held the position
for almost seven years, will continue in
the role until the next University president names her successor, a process that
could take up to a year. Vice Provost and

Dean of Undergraduate Education Robert
McMaster will serve as acting executive
vice president and provost during Hanson’s
leave.
In her August announcement, Hanson
cited personal and family considerations
as reasons for stepping down, but said a
three-month leave will provide her time to
attend to them and allow her to return to
the University. Hanson said she was interested in returning due to the transition in
University leadership.
“It’s a somewhat tender moment for the
University with so many changes taking
place in the administration and I care about
this place a lot and would like to do all I can
to maintain the momentum we have and
bring stability,” Hanson said.
u See PROVOST Page 4

Last week’s midterm
election saw a surge in voter
turnout throughout Minneapolis, including several
student-dense areas.
While student turnout
proved to be less than city
averages, student precincts
showed higher turnout
rates than the 2014 midterm
election. Experts say while
student voter turnout is historically low, the 2016 presidential election mobilized
student populations.
“I’ve heard a lot of discouraging comments about
students, and it turns out
— in 2018 — that’s unfair.
Students are watching,
they care and they turned
out,” said Larry Jacobs, director of the University’s
Center for the Study of
Politics and Governance at
the Humphrey School of
Public Affairs.
In Minneapolis, registered voter turnout was
more than 67 percent, compared to around 55 percent
in 2014. Student precincts

also experienced significant
increases.
Superblock voted in
precinct 2-10. In 2014, registered voter turnout in this
precinct was 32 percent,
while it was 56 percent
this election.
Dinkytown, where students voted in precincts
Ward 3-1 and 3-2, saw 42 and
45 percent of voters turn out
in 2014, while 60 and 71 percent turned out out this election, respectively.
Como voted in precincts
2-3 and 1-7. In 2014, registered voter turnout was 44
and 45 respectively, while
it was 67 and 70 percent in
the respective precincts
this election.
“The higher turnout
around younger people will
turn out to be an important
and surprising development
of 2018,” Jacobs said.
Students voting in all
University-area precincts
leaned overwhelmingly
democratic.
Over 70 percent of votes
went to elected DFL candidates Amy Klobuchar, Tina
Smith, Tim Walz, Ilhan
Omar and Mohamud Noor in
these precincts.
“People always say it’s
tough to get students to vote,
and while it may at times be
difficult to get students to

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vote, 20 of them can change
the whole frickin’ world
through their passion and
organizing, and next thing
you know, you’ve got a blue
wave coming,” Minneapolis
Mayor Jacob Frey said at the
DFL’s election night party.
Preliminary estimates
indicate that around 64 percent of voters statewide
turned out, either in-person

or by absentee ballot voting.
“That is the highest percentage of voter participation in Minnesota for a midterm election since 2002 and
the largest raw total for a
midterm election in Minnesota history,” Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon
said in a press release.
Students also door
knocked, attended campus

political groups’ meetings and registered to vote
in higher numbers than
past years.
Jacobs said that lawmakers should take notice
of the increased student
engagement.
“After all, if students
help to vote you in, they can
also help to vote you out,”
he said.

Rural, opioid-using mothers lack options
A University study
found opioid-affected
births are increasing
in rural regions.
BY LEW BLANK
lblank@mndaily.com

A study released by the
University of Minnesota late
last month found that opioidusing women in rural parts of
the U.S. often lack adequate
health treatment during
childbirth.
The number of children
in Minnesota with neonatal
abstinence syndrome, a harmful disease seen in the children of opioid-using mothers,
has increased by 70 percent
between 2012 and 2016, according to the Minnesota Department of Health. A driving

factor behind the increase is
a lack of high-quality opioid
treatment in rural clinics, according to the research.
The study discovered that
rural women with opioid use
disorder gave birth in rural
hospitals 62.5 percent of the
time, while a minority — 37.5
percent — migrate to urban
hospitals for natal care.
This can cause problems
for children with NAS, as rural clinics often lack the training, funding and resources of
urban hospitals.
When opioid-using mothers in rural areas give birth,
they often don’t have the time
or the money to travel long
distances to an urban hospital
with high quality treatments
for NAS, said Bert Chantarat,
a University graduate student who helped analyze the

results of the study.
“They may live in somewhere like Bemidji and they
have to go to a hospital ... miles
away,” Chantarat said. “That’s
a big issue.”
Rural clinics are less likely
to be certified to provide medication-assisted treatment, a
common treatment for opioid disorders. This can leave
children born to opioid-using
mothers at greater risk to the
effects of NAS, the symptoms
of which mimic the dependency and withdrawal experience
of regular opioid users, said
Holly Geyer, a doctor at the
Mayo Clinic with expertise in
opioid disorders.
“Out in rural areas, where
you might have only a nurse
practitioner or a physician
assistant ... our patients don’t
get [medication-assisted

treatment],” Geyer said. “Patients are unlikely in many
circumstances to travel all the
way back to urban areas just to
receive a prescription.”
It is especially difficult
for rural women to seek care
in urban clinics because prenatal care typically requires
multiple hospital visits, which
poses a financial barrier to rural women, said Cresta Jones,
who studies opioid use and its
effects and helped conduct the
study.
One solution to the disparity between the quality of
care in urban and rural clinics is training to rural doctors how to properly treat
NAS, said Kurt DeVine, a
doctor who leads initiatives
throughout Minnesota to
expand opioid treatment to
rural communities.

“It’s about education,” he
said. “We go to a lot of places
and ... we almost always convince a fair number of the
people there that [opioid treatment] is a very useful and convenient type of thing to have
available all over rural areas.”
Jones said it is also important to allocate more funding
and resources to rural doctors
at both the state and federal
level in order to provide better
care for children affected by
NAS.
“We can’t just be building
… centers of excellence in the
urban areas,” she said. “We
need to get out to the rural
communities, train providers
there and give them the resources to give the same [opioid treatment] in rural communities as we would in more
urban communities.”

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Thursday, November 15, 2018

3

Interaction improves learning, study says

Students give presentations in BIOL 3211 - Physiology of Humans and Other Animals in an active learning classroom in Bruininks Hall on Thursday, April 19.

A new study published
by University of Minnesota
researchers found that
working in groups can help
students better understand
classroom material.
The study, published last
month, found that within
STEM-related courses, such
as chemistry, group dialogue
improved critical thinking
about concepts students

were learning. The researchers wanted to see if active
learning was an effective
form of learning information.
“What happens to students when they are interacting and engaging with
other students? How do they
benefit?” said Abdi Warfa, a
lead researcher for the study
and a University assistant
professor in biology teaching
and learning. “Interactions
change how students think
about scientific concepts.”
The study was done in a
freshman chemistry class at
the University of WisconsinRiver Falls. According to
Warfa, the 84 students who
participated were put into

small groups for the study.
“We work better when
we are in a group, and we can
share our ideas and refine
our ideas with other people,”
said Gillian Roehrig, a University professor and associate director of the STEM
Education Center.
This study comes at a
time when an emphasis on
active learning in classrooms
is taking place. Active learning works to engage students
more with the material rather than sitting in a lecture,
Warfa said.
“The prevalence of these
courses are increasing, so we
want to understand how to
we make this efficient,” he
said. “We want to understand

the discourse that is happening in these groups.”
Kelley O’Brien, a University junior studying medical
laboratory sciences, said only a few of her classes have
involved active learning in
her classes. But she thinks it
does help with comprehending the material.
“You can trade your
knowledge,” she said. “I
think group work is helpful,
but it depends on the class.”
The researchers who
conducted the study are
in the Department of Biology Teaching and Learning, which works to apply
research to help change scientific education, according
to their website.

While the study focused
on science-related classes,
group discourse in classrooms can be applied across
many disciplines, Roehrig
said.
One of the goals of the
study is to develop better
curriculum within classes,
Warfa said.
“We don’t naturally know
how to work in a group and
share our ideas and not put
people down,” Roehrig said.
“That’s the piece that we
have to work hard at.”
The next steps following
this study include collecting
data on the topic from other
institutions and looking to
see if group composition,
like participants’ genders,

DAILY FILE PHOTO

influences active learning.
“What becomes important is creating a learning
environment that is conducive to how we think people
learn,” Warfa said.

“We work better
when we are in
a group, and we
can share our
ideas and refine
our ideas with
other people.”
GILLIAN ROEHRIG
associate director
STEM Education Center

UMN report: our diets affect environment
The review looked
at the effects diet
can have on health
and environment.
BY NIKKI PEDERSON
npederson@mndaily.com

A review released by
University of Minnesota
researchers late last month
looked at the world’s changing diets, and a related
increase in disease and environmental degradation
that comes with it – what
researchers have called the
diet, health and environment
“trilemma.”
With the world population expected to reach
over 9 billion people by the
mid-century, feeding that
amount of people will come
with challenges and risks.
As societies become richer
and more urbanized, the food
the population consumes
becomes higher in calories
and leans heavily on animal
products. These trends are
on a trajectory to become
more severe during the coming decades, especially in developing nations, according
to the article.
With these changes,
there is an increased prevalence of diet-related diseases
such as diabetes, heart disease and obesity, as well as
an increase in fertilizer use,
biodiversity loss and greenhouse gas emissions.
The review was a collaboration between Michael
Clark, a University graduate student, and University
faculty members including
Jason Hill, a professor in the
Department of Bioproducts
and Biosystems Engineering.
Hill said that the world
faces a challenge in trying to
solve the diet, health and environmental problems. “And
these challenges are linked,”
he added.
Different foods take up
different amounts of land
and can release varying
amounts of greenhouse gas

emissions. Research has
found that plant-based foods
often have the lowest emissions per kilocalorie of food
produced and also require
the least amount of land.
Animals such as cattle,
sheep and goats require approximately 2,000 to 10,000
percent more land than
plant-based foods, depending on the extent of their
grazing. They can also contribute up to 10,000 percent
more greenhouse gas emissions. This is largely in part
because of the inefficiency
with which they convert
feed into human-edible food,
according to the article.
“We have a lot of resources going to food and those
resources have an environmental impact,” said Jennifer
Schmitt, program director
of the NorthStar Initiative
at the Institute on the Environment. “One could argue
it’s justifiable — we have to
feed ourselves — but when
we have excess resources …
then we’re not getting a benefit from it and we’re actually causing more harm.”
Increasing crop yield and
productivity is important
for an increasing population,
but can negatively affect the
planet. Food production can
be increased in two ways,
said Deepak Ray, a scientist
at the Institute on the Environment. The area of the
harvest can be increased or
the production yield of the
crop can.
“Agriculture is affected
by our weather and climate,
but it also affects our weather and climate,” Ray said.
The trends found in food
consumption can also be
applied to human health,
according to the review.
In general, diets higher
in plant-based foods are
associated with reduced
disease risk, compared to
omnivorous diets where
people consume more meat
and dairy. Consuming red or
processed red meats, which
the World Health Organization lists as Group 2A
and Group 1 (the same level

HAILEE SCHIEVELBEIN, DAILY

as smoking tobacco) carcinogens respectively, is
associated with poor health
and diet-related disease.
The review looked at
possible solutions for the issues presented. One option
suggested a switch to more
plant-based diets, such as
Mediterranean, vegetarian
or vegan diets. Global adoption of these healthier diets

could reduce global dietrelated emissions by up to
60 percent, research found.
A dietary switch could also
simultaneously benefit human health, as diabetes and
other food-related diseases
are expected to increase over
50 percent in the next few
decades.
Another suggestion the
University researchers list-

ed was to limit food waste,
as 30 to 40 percent of all food
production is lost or wasted.
“You put all of these [land
and water] resources that
have a carbon impact and
have other environmental
impacts ... into something
that just goes into the trash?”
Schmitt said. “That’s a waste
of resources.”
Other options include

imwproving crop yield, improved land use planning and
more efficient fertilizer use.
“There are great challenges ahead of us in solving
the world’s diet, health and
environmental problems,”
Hill said. “But there are
also things that we can do to
reduce the negative impacts
that this ‘trilemma’ has
upon us.”

4

Thursday, November 15, 2018

DAILY FILE PHOTO

A vote poster is on the ground on the University of Minnesota’s mall on Tuesday, Nov. 6.

Early voting
u from Page 1

This was the first election
that had an early vote center
on campus. Carl said making
voting accessible for students
and immigrant populations
was a goal of the placement.
“[The area around the
University] is also an area
that’s very high in terms of

Gen Z
u from Page 1

Chelsea Collins, an undecided freshman, said she
often tunes out the news because it acts as such a major source of stress. “I don’t
watch news much. It’s just
so negative, I try to avoid it,”
she said. “Everything that
gets reported on just makes
me feel like the world is just
such an awful place.”
The APA study showed
members of Gen Z feel
greater stress regarding national issues covered by the
news than the broader adult
population.

immigrant populations who
are new citizens, so close to
Cedar-Riverside for example, and so we were trying to
make sure we hit multiple
audiences for potential voters
who have shown historically
low rates of turnout,” Carl
said.
The downtown early
vote center and a north
Minneapolis location have
existed since 2016. This

election, a Northeast location was moved to campus.
Uptown also had a center for
the first time.
“I think the [University]
location did okay,” Carl said.
“I think it can do better in
the future, but this is our
first year at the campus, and
I think it would be good for
us to commit to a longer term
partnership with the campus
so … the neighborhood can

start to get used to it.”
The three neighborhood
locations were only open for
the seven days leading up
to Election Day, while the
downtown location opened
Sept. 21. The downtown location saw the highest turnout
with around 12,200 ballots
cast.
“I had thought about early
voting in past elections, but it
was always at different areas

Alison Brown, who volunteers with PAWS regularly with her Great Dane,
Phoenix, said young adults
are facing stressors now
that are far different than
previous generations — including hers — have faced.
“I don’t think the stress
has necessarily grown, per
se, but I definitely think
it’s changed,” Brown said.
“Presidents didn’t communicate via tweets. It’s brutal
and it’s frightening. That’s
why we volunteer here.”
Looking forward,
Loeffler said that it’s critical to focus on the positives.
“As human beings,
we tend to focus on the

negative. We tend to focus
on all the things that go
wrong, but it’s important
to focus on all of the
things that could go right,
too,” he said.

TIJUANA, Mexico — Migrants in a caravan of Central
Americans arrived in Tijuana
by the hundreds Wednesday,
getting their first glimpse of
the robust U.S. military presence that awaits them after
President Donald Trump ordered thousands of troops to
the border.
Several hundred people
from the caravan got off
buses and made their way to
a shelter on the Mexican side
near the border to line up for
food. Doctors checked those
fighting colds and other ailments while several dozen
migrants, mostly single men,
spent the night at a Tijuana
beach that is cut by a towering border wall of metal bars.
Several Border Patrol agents
in San Diego watched them
through the barrier separating the U.S. and Mexico.
The first wave of migrants in the caravan, which
became a central theme of
the recent U.S. election, began arriving in Tijuana in recent days, and their numbers
have grown each day. The
bulk of the main caravan appeared to be about 1,100 miles
(1,800 kilometers) from the
border, but has recently been
moving hundreds of miles
a day by hitching rides on
trucks and buses.
Many of the new arrivals
were waiting in Tijuana for
the caravan leaders to arrive
and provide guidance on their
immigration options to the
U.S., including seeking asylum. Some said they might
cross illegally.
U.S. Defense Secretary
Jim Mattis, meanwhile, visited U.S. troops posted at the
border in Texas and said the
deployment provides good
training for war, despite
criticism that the effort is
a waste of taxpayer money
and a political stunt. Most of
the troops are in Texas, more
than 1,500 miles from where
the caravan is arriving.
The first arrivals generally received a warm welcome
from Tijuana, despite the
fact that its shelter system to
house migrants is at capacity.
The city’s secretary of economic development has said
there are about 3,000 jobs for
migrants who want to stay in
the city. Some residents came

like downtown, or at other
spots that were off campus.
This location was really accessible for me. I just don’t
take public transit very often,” Weigand said.
In preparation for the
2020 presidential election,
the City is working with
University administration
and neighborhood vote center employees to gather
feedback on the location’s

down to where the men were
camped on a beach and gave
them tacos to eat Wednesday.
The Central Americans
in the caravan are the latest
migrants to arrive in Tijuana
with the hope of crossing into
the United States. Tijuana
shelters in 2016 housed Haitians who came by the thousands after making their way
from Brazil with plans to get
to the U.S. Since then, several thousand Haitians have
remained in Tijuana, finding
work. Some have married local residents and enrolled in
local universities.
“Mexico has been excellent; we have no complaint
about Mexico. The United
States remains to be seen,”
said Josue Vargas, a migrant from Honduras who
finally pulled into Tijuana on
Wednesday after more than a
month on the road.
Ilse Marilu, 24, arrived in
Tijuana late Tuesday with
her 3-year-old daughter, having joined the caravan with
a large contingent from San
Pedro Sula, Honduras. She
walked several miles Tuesday in a fruitless search for
space in a migrant shelter before reaching the beach plaza. A Mexican couple dropped
off a tent that her daughter
and three other children used
to sleep in as an evening chill
set in.
She planned to stay in Tijuana until caravan leaders
arrived and offered help on
how to seek asylum in the US.
“We are going to enter
through the front door,”
Marilu said, insisting she
would never try to enter the
country illegally.
A few people pitched tents
at the Tijuana beach plaza
while most, like Henry Salinas, 30, of Honduras, planned
to sleep there in the open.
He said that he intended
to wait for thousands more in
the caravan to arrive and that
he hoped to jump the fence
in a large group at the same
time, overwhelming Border
Patrol agents.
“It’s going to be all against
one, one against all. All of
Central America against
one, and one against Central America. ... All against
Trump, and Trump against
all,” he said.
On Tuesday, a couple of
dozen migrants scaled the

success, Carl said.
“I think early voting and
the ability to cast a ballot on
campus was a smart innovation. Anything that lowers
the cost of casting a ballot is
likely to increase turnout,”
said Larry Jacobs, director
of the University’s Center
for the Study of Politics
and Governance. “I hope the
University will continue to
encourage student voting.”

steel border fence to celebrate their arrival, chanting “Yes, we could!” One man
dropped over to the U.S. side
briefly as border agents
watched from a distance. He
ran quickly back to the fence.
Tijuana’s head of migrant
services, Cesar Palencia
Chavez, said authorities offered to take the migrants
to shelters immediately, but
they initially refused.
“They wanted to stay together in a single shelter,”
Palencia Chavez said, “but
at this time that’s not possible” because shelters are
designed for smaller groups
and generally offer separate
facilities for men, women and
families.
But he said that after
their visit to the border, most
were taken to shelters in
groups of 30 or 40.
On Wednesday, buses and
trucks carried some migrants
into the state of Sinaloa along
the Gulf of California and farther northward into the border state of Sonora.
The Rev. Miguel Angel
Soto, director of the Casa
de Migrante in the Sinaloa
capital of Culiacan, said about
2,000 migrants had arrived
in that area. He said the state
government, the Roman
Catholic Church and city officials in Escuinapa, Sinaloa,
were helping the migrants.
The priest said the
church had been able to
get “good people” to provide
buses for moving migrants
northward. He said 24 buses
had left Escuinapa on an
eight-hour drive to Navojoa
in Sonora state.
Small groups were also reported in the northern cities
of Saltillo and Monterrey, in
the region near Texas.
About 1,300 migrants in a
second caravan were resting
at a stadium in Mexico City,
where the first group stayed
several days last week. By
early Wednesday, an additional 1,100 migrants from a
third and last caravan also arrived at the stadium.
Like most of those in the
third caravan, migrant Javier
Pineda is from El Salvador,
and hopes to reach the United
States. Referring to the first
group nearing the end of the
journey, Pineda said, “if they
could do it, there is no reason
why we can’t.”

5

Thursday, November 15, 2018

Leave
u from Page 1

for financial circumstances,” said Rebecca RopersHuilman, vice provost for
faculty and academic affairs,
who presented the policy before several Senate committees this semester.
The revised policy keeps
the full year sabbatical and
bumps a one-semester sabbatical up to full pay, while
eliminating the singlesemester leave.
“That’s the real concern
we’re trying to address: to
make [sabbatical] possible

for people who have a high
quality scholarly idea for
which more intensive time
would be useful,” RopersHuilman said. “They would
be able to do that with much
much less attention to their
own personal financial
circumstances.”
Peh Ng, chair of the
Senate Committee on
Faculty Affairs, said many
faculty members she talked to support the changes.
Ng previously led the subcommittee that worked on
the policy.
“By and large, faculty
really are looking forward
to having the one semester

sabbatical fully funded,”
Ng said.
Ropers-Huilman said
changes would bring the
University more in line with
other Big Ten institutions.
Most schools across the
country offer a shorter sabbatical option, she said.
At the University, there
is wide variation among
how colleges use sabbaticals
and leaves. Some colleges
are more likely than others to grant leaves, RopersHuilman said. The new
policy also helps formalize the process of applying
for sabbatical, which she
said will help provide more

consistency across colleges.
She had expected to bring
the revised policy to a vote at
the Senate meeting on Nov.
1, but several faculty took issue with parts of the policy.
Physics professor
Clement Pryke took issue
with removing single-semester leaves, especially if
the new policy implemented
a more rigid application process for sabbaticals.
“I look at this and I’m
being ask to give up something,” he said. “I’m a little
disquieted that I’m being
asked to give up my situation
that I’ve personally had with
no guarantee of ... any sort of

leaves being granted at all.”
Chemical engineering
professor David Morse took
a single-semester leave in
the early 2000s because he
was not eligible for a sabbatical at the time. Faculty must
work at the University for
at least six academic years
before they are eligible for
sabbatical, according to
the policy.
Morse said he would like
to see more flexibility for
faculty to take sabbatical if
the University takes away a
single-semester leave.
Ropers-Huilman said
the policy will undergo further revision in the coming

months. “Basically, what’s
happening with the new
policy is some people read it
and feel like they’re losing
and other people feel like
they are gaining,” she said.
“That’s the sticking point.”
But the final policy may
have changes not everyone
will like.
“We’ll have to figure out
what’s best for the entire
University, not just best
for what some people can
make in a particular context,” Ropers-Huilman said.
“Ultimately, it will be a question of individual benefit
versus what’s best for the
entire University.”

JANE BORSTAD, DAILY

Language
u from Page 1

Beyond funding designated for the fellowship program, the Institute will receive an additional $230,000
annually for the next four
years. The funding will help
develop new courses with
international content and
expand existing ones. It will
also develop new opportunities for learning about global

topics and fund speakers and
workshops, Davidheiser said.
“For the students, of
course, it’s fantastic,” said
Klaas van der Sanden,
program director for the
Institute. “For the Institute,
it allows us to experiment
internationally. It allows us
to experiment with international content … and incorporate that into the courses,
too.”
The fellowship component of the grant provides

financial support to students studying languages
not commonly taught at the
University. It is available to
students studying any language other than Spanish,
French and German,
Davidheiser said.
“These languages are incredibly difficult to study.
So, it frees you up to do it full
time,” said Thomas Wolfe,
the director of undergraduate studies with the Institute.
The financial aid from

the fellowships are designed
to assist with tuition and living costs while students are
at the University or abroad.
Davidheiser said it is a highly competitive fellowship.
There were 12 undergraduate fellowships and 16 graduate fellowships awarded this
academic year, she said.
“It’s really helping me
out to spend less time doing part-time work and
more time actually focusing on my studies,” said Ben

Guard troops search for wildfire victims
BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

PARADISE, Calif. —
With at least 130 people still
missing, National Guard
troops searched Wednesday
through charred debris for
more victims of California’s
deadliest wildfire as top
federal and state officials
toured the ruins of a community completely destroyed
by the flames.
Interior Secretary Ryan
Zinke joined Gov. Jerry
Brown on a visit to the leveled town of Paradise, telling
reporters it was the worst
fire devastation he had ever
seen.
“Now is not the time to
point fingers,” Zinke said.
“There are lots of reasons
these catastrophic fires are
happening.” He cited warmer temperatures, dead trees
and the poor forest management.
Brown, a frequent
critic of President Donald
Trump’s policies, said he
spoke with Trump, who
pledged federal assistance.
“This is so devastating
that I don’t really have the
words to describe it,” Brown
said, saying officials would
need to learn how to better
prevent fires from becoming
so deadly .
Nearly 8,800 homes were
destroyed when flames hit

Paradise, a former gold-mining camp popular with retirees, on Nov. 8, killing at least
56 people in California’s
deadliest wildfire, Sheriff
Kory Honea announced
Wednesday evening. There
were also three fatalities
from separate blazes in
Southern California.
Honea said the task of
searching for bodies was so
vast that his office brought
in another 287 searchers
Wednesday, including the
National Guard troops,
bringing the total number
of searchers to 461 plus 22
cadaver dogs. He said a rapid-DNA assessment system
was expected to be in place
soon to speed up identifications of the dead, though officials have tentatively identified 47 of the 56.
It will take years to rebuild the town of 27,000, if
people decide that’s what
should be done, said Brock
Long, administrator of the
Federal Emergency Management Agency. The town
in the foothills of the Sierra
Nevada Mountains looks
like a wasteland.
“The infrastructure is basically a total rebuild at this
point,” Long said. “You’re not
going to be able to rebuild
Paradise the way it was.”
Temporary schools and
hospitals will be brought in,

Long said. Officials are also
looking to bring in mobile
homes for thousands of people left homeless.
Debris removal in Paradise and outlying communities will have to wait until
the search for victims finishes, he said.
That grim search continued Wednesday.
On one street, ash and
dust flew up as roughly 20
National Guard members
wearing white jumpsuits,
helmets and breathing
masks lifted giant heaps
of bent and burned metal,
in what was left of a home.
Pink and blue chalk drawings of a cat and a flower
remained on the driveway,
near a scorched toy truck.
The soldiers targeted
homes of the missing. If anything resembling human
remains is found, a coroner
takes over.
After the soldiers finished at the site, a chaplain huddled with them in
prayer.
The number of missing
is “fluctuating every day”
as people are located or remains are found, said Steve
Collins, a deputy with the
Butte County Sheriff’s Department.
Authorities on Wednesday released the names of
about 100 people who are

still missing, including many in their 80s and 90s, and
dozens more could still be
unaccounted for. Sheriff’s
department spokeswoman
Megan McMann said the
list was incomplete because
detectives were concerned
they would be overwhelmed
with calls from relatives if
the entire list were released.
“We can’t release them
all at once,” McMann said.
“So they are releasing the
names in batches.”
Authorities have not updated the total number of
missing since Sunday, when
228 people were unaccounted for.
Sol Bechtold’s 75-yearold mother was not on the
list. Her house burned down
along with the rest of her
neighborhood in Magalia,
a community just north of
Paradise.
“The list they published
is missing a lot of names,”
said Bechtold, who’s still
searching shelters for his
mother, a widow who lived
alone and did not drive.
A sheriff’s deputy asked
Bechtold on Wednesday
for information that could
identify her remains, like
any history of broken bones.
He told the officer she had a
knee replacement. Bechtold
predicted that the death toll
would rise sharply.

Allard, a University senior
currently participating in
the fellowship. He is double
majoring in political science
and Asian languages and
literatures.
“I don’t think enough
people fully recognize how
important it is to learn other
languages and other cultures,” he said. “You don’t
really understand your own
country, your own culture
context, until you look beyond it and see how other

Provost
u from Page 1

Regents Tom Anderson
and Steve Sviggum said they
are confident in Hanson’s
ability to provide continuity during the presidential
transition.
“I have tremendous confidence in Provost Hanson and I
think that’s one of the byproducts of her wanting to stay,”
Anderson said.
Sviggum said he is glad
Hanson will return to the University and provide a bridge
in leadership during the transition to a new president.
Hanson is responsible for
overseeing the University’s
academics and academic
and research initiatives,
and is also involved in the
University’s budgeting and
capital planning.
McMaster previously
served as chair of the Department of Geography and as an
associate dean for budget and
planning in the College of Liberal Arts. While he will likely
delegate some of his vice provost responsibilities, Hanson
said, McMaster will still maintain a direct line of responsibility in his current role.
“We’ve been talking during the last couple of weeks
on how we might lighten his
load a little bit so that he can
take up some of the things
that are usually on my plate,”
said Hanson.
Hanson said she will

people are doing things
differently.”
Alexandra Ludwig, a
junior majoring in global
studies and Spanish and
Portuguese studies, said the
grant will lead to international studies being taken more
seriously.
“The world is so interconnected,” she said. “It’s so important that we have these
programs that ... reinforce
the importance of living in a
global society.”

“What I hope to do
is ... keep stability
and continuity for
a little bit while
the new president
seeks out a
provost.”
KAREN HANSON
University of Minnesota
Regent

remain in contact with McMaster during her leave
and expects the transition to
go smoothly.
Sviggum said he is confident in McMaster’s ability to
balance the two roles during
Hanson’s leave, and stressed
that it’s important the next
president be able to choose a
new provost as the two will
work closely together.
During her final stretch of
time at the University, Hanson will continue to oversee
several initiatives, including
the reorganization of the Academic Health Center, child
care planning for the Twin
Cities campus and the beginning of the University’s systemwide strategic plan.
“What I hope to do is keep
momentum going on initiatives we have now and keep
stability and continuity for a
little bit while the new president seeks out a provost,”
Hanson said.

6

Sports

MNDAILY.COM

MN DAILY

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2018

MEN’S BASKETBALL

Senior Dupree McBrayer runs down the court after injuring his leg on Monday, Nov. 12 at Williams Arena. The Gophers beat the Utes 78-69.

TONY SAUNDERS, DAILY

McBrayer healthy and ready for season
The guard hopes
for a healthy final
year after battling
injuries last season.
BY NICK JUNGHEIM
njungheim@mndaily.com

The Gophers men’s
basketball team didn’t have
the season they were hoping
for in 2017-18. The whole
team is looking to rebound
this season, perhaps nobody
more so than senior Dupree
McBrayer.
The senior from Queens,
New York battled injuries all
last season. Although he only
missed five games due to injury, head coach Richard Pitino
said McBrayer was never at

full strength.
“He was hobbling last
year,” Pitino said. “He could
hardly walk, he could hardly
practice. You’re not going
to get in a flow offensively
if you do not practice. When
he’s healthy, he’s a really,
really good guard. Last year
was just a perfect storm of
having bad things happen at
once.”
At the Big Ten media day
before the season, McBrayer
detailed exactly how much
his injury limited him last
year.
“I really couldn’t jump, really couldn’t move laterally,”
McBrayer said. “I couldn’t
have a good first step or anything, so it was just hard running up and down [the court].”

While battling a nagging
leg injury, McBrayer was
still able to average 9.4 points
per game. However, the injury hindered his efficiency.
He shot just .357 from the
field, compared to .448 the
year prior. Now healthy, he
says he feels much better on
the court.
In this year’s regular
season opener against Nebraska-Omaha, it appeared
McBrayer was back to his old
self, connecting on five of six
three-point field goals.
“I’m extremely happy,”
McBrayer said. “I’m having a
lot of fun, I’m smiling, just like
I was two years ago. I’m playing with a lot of confidence
right now.”
McBrayer is part of a

WOMEN’S HOCKEY

Brown finds the balance
Balancing both her
classes and practices
with the Gophers
proves difficult.

JACK RODGERS, DAILY

and has seven points.
Head coach Brad Frost
said Brown can be physical
even though she isn’t the biggest defender.
“It’s the style that she
plays,” Frost said. “She loves
to use her body to separate
players from the puck. She’s
got a great stick deflecting
passes and shots. She’s somebody that has improved this
year and has been one of our
best [defenders].”
Center Taylor Wente
played against Brown when
Wente played for Maple
Grove High School. Maple
Grove and Blaine are both in
the Northwest Suburban Conference.
Wente said Brown is calm
on the ice.
“When you try to go
against her going to the puck,
she’s super smart and knows
what she’s doing with the
puck,” Wente said. “We need
people that have confidence
with the puck.”
Last season, Brown had
someone she could talk to
about engineering. Former
Gophers’ center Cara Piazza
was also a mechanical engineering major. Brown said
when she had a question
about engineering, she would

ask Piazza and they bounced
ideas off each other.
“It would get weird in the
locker room,” Brown said.
“People would [say], ‘oh my
goodness.’ Usually when we
get to the rink, it’s all hockey.”
Brown isn’t the only one
in hockey excited about engineering. The NHL launched a
program called Future Goals
to mark the league’s centenary in 2017 dedicated to motivating students to pursue careers in STEM. STEM stands
for science, technology, engineering and math. According
to the Future Goals’ website,
a majority of students lose interest in STEM before beginning their sophomore year of
high school.
Brown said she can’t apply
mechanical engineering to
hockey all the time because
she could lose concentration
on the ice.
“Sometimes, I think about
it on the ice at practice,” she
said. “I’ll be like, ‘Why did that
bounce that way?’ I’ll be like,
‘Oh, coefficient of friction’
and stuff like that comes to
my head. I’ll [say] ‘Holy cow,
let’s have a reality check and
come back to hockey.’ I don’t
think I do that on the ice or on
the bench.”

tournament in McBrayer’s
senior season. In order accomplish that, McBrayer will
have to add value to the team
with his play and leadership.
His head coach said his will to
win is second to none.
“In the conference tournament last year he could barely walk,” Pitino said before
the season, “He kept telling
me, ‘I’m fine when it’s time to
play.’ Just shows you the type
of toughness that he has.”
McBrayer and the Gophers will hit the road
next week, starting with
three games in four days at
the Vancouver Showcase.
The tournament begins
with a matchup against
Texas A&M on Sunday at
9:30 p.m. CT.

McCutcheon inducted Saturday into
International Volleyball Hall of Fame

BY DAVID MULLEN
dmullen@mndaily.com

Defender Emily Brown looks to pass the puck up the ice at Ridder Arena on Friday, Oct. 19. The Gophers beat Ohio State 3-0.

good at scoring ... and passing
the ball.”
While Washington took
some time to adjust to the college game, he improved as he
got more playing time near
the end of last season. After
a summer of working with
his teammates, he now feels
more familiar with the team
around him.
“I just got to know all my
teammates off the court
more,” Washington said.
“We just talked a lot about
whether we like the ball here
or there ... just being comfortable with them, them being
comfortable with me ... being
able to trust each other.”
The goal for McBrayer,
Washington and the Gophers
is a return to the NCAA

VOLLEYBALL

McCutcheon stayed
home Saturday to
be with team rather
than at the ceremony.

BY ERIK NELSON
enelson2@mndaily.com

Defender Emily Brown
may try to ignore it on the ice,
but science has been a presence in her life for the past
few years.
During her senior year at
Blaine High School, Brown
took an engineering course.
That was the event that
pushed her to pursue mechanical engineering as her
college major.
“They have this pre-engineering program where you
take a bunch of prep classes,”
Brown said. “That’s what first
inspired me because I didn’t
really know what engineering necessarily was before
that. Taking those classes
and realizing that, ‘Hey, I like
math and science’ made me
want to pursue it [as a major].”
Brown said the toughest part about being in the
University’s mechanical engineering program is scheduling classes while trying to
avoid conflict with her hockey career.
“They only offer them
once a semester,” she said.
“They like to choose 2 p.m. for
their classes, which is when
we practice. Fitting things
in is tough. Once you do that,
the toughest part is surviving.
People say it’s hard, but it’s
also fun.”
When she’s not solving
problems in her engineering
courses, Brown is racking up
points from the blue line for
the Gophers. Brown is Minnesota’s second-highest scoring defender this season behind Patti Marshall. She has
scored two goals this season

Minnesota backcourt that
features an intriguing mix
of youth and experience
and has a special connection
to the Gophers’ sixth man
this season.
Sophomore Isaiah Washington, like McBrayer, is a
native of New York City.
Raised in Harlem, Washington won New York’s Mr. Basketball award in his senior
season playing for St. Raymond High School. Both he
and McBrayer played for the
New Heights AAU program.
Now at Minnesota, their familiarity gives the duo an advantage over opposing teams.
“We’ve known each other
since we were young,” McBrayer said. “There’s chemistry there. We’re both really

When you think of New
Zealand sports, rugby or cricket may come to mind — but not
volleyball.
On Saturday, the International Volleyball Hall of Fame
inducted Gophers volleyball
head coach Hugh McCutcheon into the hall as the first
Kiwi to have the honor.
“It’s just so surreal and it’s
such an incredible thing, and
maybe one day I’ll be able to
describe it for you,” McCutcheon said.
McCutcheon, instead of
going to Holyoke, Massachusetts for the ceremony,
changed his plans and stayed
with his team as they took on
No. 12 Purdue.
“The fact that he stayed
with us showed us how he really believes in us this year,
so it was cool to see that,” said
outside hitter Alexis Hart after Saturday’s match.
Earlier in the week he had
committed to being at the
ceremony but woke up early
last Tuesday morning and
contemplated the decision. He
said that the potential risk of
leaving the team for a banquet
across the country better suited him to be on the bench for
a nationally-ranked Big Ten
matchup.
Former Gophers volleyball player and Olympian Daly Santana said that McCutcheon staying showed everyone
on the outside who he really is.
“It shows his commitment
to the team and shows how he
is 100 percent with the team

at all times,” Santana said.
Although McCutcheon
was not at the ceremony, he
got to celebrate his accomplishment with his team and
Gophers fans as a video of
former players and coaches
congratulated him in video
montage.
Volleyball background
McCutcheon began his
volleyball career in in 1985 after a small interaction with his
basketball coach.
“I thought volleyball
looked cool, I knew the coach, I
thought he was a cool guy. He
was my physics teacher and
the guys on the team seemed
like a good bunch of dudes,”
McCutcheon said.
He eventually decided to
come to the United States to
reach his volleyball potential. McCutcheon enrolled at
Brigham Young University
in 1991 and was a standout for
the Cougars as he earned AllAmerican honorable mention
in 1993.
After his playing career,
he began coaching while
working towards a graduate
degree at BYU “as a means to
an academic end.” Coaching
instilled in his heart in the
process.
“I ended up doing two masters and after my first one, I
realized I like academics, but
I really had a much stronger
head-and-heart connection to
coaching,” McCutcheon said.
Although there was never
a clear pathway, McCutcheon
gained opportunities through
the United States National
Team boys’, men’s and women’s teams. Through his time
with the national team, McCutcheon accumulated two
Olympic medals, a gold medal
in 2008 while coaching the
men, and a silver in 2012 with

“He’s a normal guy
who’s committed
to you ... as a
player, but will
also be a mentor
in life, in school or
anything.”
DALY SANTANA
former Gophers volleyball
player and Puerto Rican
Olympian

the women.
Shortly after the Olympics
in 2012, McCutcheon join the
Gophers as their head coach.
Player-Coach
Relationships
Although McCutcheon
has a lot to be proud of, his
players say he’s just Hugh.
“He’s a normal guy who’s
committed to you and your
improvement as a player, but
will also be a mentor in life, in
school or anything,” Santana
said.
Setter Samantha SeligerSwenson said that this relationship helps each player on
the court as well.
“I think we all need something different from a coach
and he can be that for us, and
I think it’s because of the investment he makes off the
court in getting to know us,”
Seliger-Swenson said.
For McCutcheon, seeing
his players progress is the biggest satisfaction for him.
“I think there’s some pride
in that,” McCutcheon said.
“Not that it’s about me, because they’re the ones doing
the work, but just the idea that
you can help them figure that
stuff out. I think that’s been a
really good thing.”

7

MNDAILY.COM

MN DAILY

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2018

ART

CULTURE TO
CONSUME

Ashley Mary embodies the
rainbow — in work and in spirit

Read this:

The Minneapolisbased artist and
designer spreads
color with her work.

“Astrophysics for
People in a Hurry”

BY LIV MARTIN
omartin@mndaily.com

BY SAMIR FERDOWSI

Ever look up at the stars and
wonder how we got here?
Follow along with the G.O.A.T.
Neil deGrasse Tyson as he
puts the question “how do
we exist?” in layman’s terms.
From the Big Bang to the
breakdown of a photon, this
book turns 5000-level physics
course material into a page
turner you can’t put down.

Listen to this:
“BALLADS 1” by Joji
Get into a mood with Joji on
his newest album “BALLADS
1.” While most artists save
a couple tracks for a selfreflective “sad boi” mood,
Joji utilized all 12 slots. From
the banger “YEAH RIGHT”
to relatable-for-everyone-insome-way “TEST DRIVE,” Joji
has hit heart-plucking gold
right off the success of his
and 88 Rising’s “Head in the
Clouds” (also a slapper of
an album to check out if you
haven’t already).

CULTURE
COMPASS
BY SAMIR FERDOWSI

Friday:
Victor Shores with
Pierre and Heart
to Gold
Nothing says “punk show”
like a good ol’ Minneapolis
dive bar. Catch a locallystacked lineup of basement
punk bands as they perform
new music specifically for the
Terminal audience. From Heart
to Gold’s angst to Pierre’s
hard-hitting anthems off
their newly released album,
the show will definitely wash
off any wear-and-tear from
the week. Victor Shores is
rumored to be performing a
plethora of new music for the
crowd, so be ready to go off!

Saturday:
“Outdoor
Adventure Expo”
Explorers, it’s finally that time
of year again. This weekend,
West Bank’s iconic Midwest
Mountaineering will host their
annual “Adventure Expo.”
In addition to crazy good
deals on all the gear you can
imagine, there will be clinics,
film screenings, lectures,
book signings and lots of
free giveaways. Check out
the “Winter Survival” course
or hear a talk from certified
winter guide Scott Oeth as
he recounts his tales from
the north. BANFF film fest will
be in town partnering with
the Expo, so swing through
for a screening to get your
adrenaline pumping and
inspire your next adventure.

Sunday:
“A Christmas Carol”
It’s never too early for some
Christmas cheer. Forty-four
years running, The Guthrie’s
classic winter performance
returns, and the skilled cast
recounts this beautiful tale of
wholehearted goodness. Join
Scrooge as he explores his
Christmases past, present and
future. Grab your family and
friends and warm up with spirit
and good times as the most
wonderful time of the year
quickly approaches. Think it’s
too cold? Bah humbug.

You may be one of her
more than 46,000 Instagram followers. Maybe you
bought a planner at Anthropologie, a yoga mat from
Manduka or a makeup bag
from Target with her artwork on it. During your daily
commute, you might have
glimpsed a colorful bus stop
in Uptown that she singlehandedly painted.
One thing is certain:
Ashley Mary has been busy
at work building her rainbow empire.
The Minneapolis-based
artist and designer is known
for her colorful canvasses,
bold designs and flashy personal style — all of which
have attracted attention
from global companies and
Instagram users alike.
It wasn’t always this way.
In her former life, Mary attended Hope College, a private, Christian liberal arts
college in Michigan, where
she received degrees in
communication and religion. After completing her
undergraduate studies, she
returned to her hometown
of Edina and worked at a
church for five years.
Back then, art was
just something she did on
the side.
“Out of school, I started
doing collage work right
away. I was just doing it
for fun, but I was getting
enough people asking me

PHOTO COURTESY OF ERIC PIERSON

Artist and designer Ashley Mary sits for a portrait in front of her works.

to make them things that it
had a snowball effect. From
there, the ball just kept rolling,” she said.
Now, almost a full 11
years after she began painting, Mary is equipped with
a Master of Arts degree
in graphic and web design
from MCAD. Her life could
not be more different.
Today, Ashley Mary
spends her time traveling to
paint murals in cities around
the country, posting updates
on her Instagram story, creating commissions for a host
of different companies and,
of course, spending time
with her dog Ren.
M a r y’ s lif e ph ilo s o phy is simple: she surrounds herself with color,
positivity and good karma. Her Instagram feed
alone captures the entire

color spectrum.
“My art has always
been colorful. That’s never
changed,” she said. “I feel
certain energy when I’m
around certain colors – they
can be happy, peaceful,
joyful.”
In addition to her ever-present color scheme,
Mary’s work often features
Matisse-like graphic shapes
and intricate patterns.
“I’m really interested in
the energy that we have as
kids. I’m drawn to the shapes
I use because I think they’re
universal. From a young
age — since we’re babies —
we understand shapes,” she
said.
Mary is the opposite of a
perfectionist when it comes
to her work.
“I really celebrate subtle nuances and what some

people might call a ‘mistake’
in a work,” she said. “For me,
that’s the part that’s the
most interesting.”
Even her personal style
embodies her colorful artworks. Her wardrobe is filled
with bright pinks, oranges,
blues and yellows.
“She almost looks like
a piece of artwork herself,”
said Erin Kate Duininck, a
collaborator and friend of
Mary since 2009.
“Physically she’s very tiny and spritely. That always
strikes me because her personality is so big, her work is
so big and her way of being
in the world is so big.”
Recently, Mary collaborated with Metro Transit
on a community outreach
project christened the “Color
Pop Bus Stop.” Painting nonstop for nine hours, Mary

transformed the Uptown
bus stop just in time to perk
up the community before
winter.
The idea came from
Kathy Graul, Metro Transit’s social media strategist
and a fan of Mary’s work.
“It’s something positive that
we could bring to the community in a temporary, fun,
playful way,” she said.
Mary, who loves any
chance to interact with the
community, was eager to
jump on board.
“[Graul] said, ‘Will you
come and do your thing on a
bus stop?’ That is like music
to any artist’s ears — when
you’re not art-directed in
an experience it’s so special
to be given the reins to do
whatever you want. It was
an adrenaline rush,” Mary
said. “Everybody who came
in had the best energy and
was so thankful … like ‘Oh, finally some color up in here!’”
Visitors came by the bus
stop to get selfies with Mary,
and one fan stayed in the bus
stop for a few hours to read a
book and watch Mary paint.
Mary has remained
humble and appreciative
throughout the growth of
her artistic prominence in
the past few years. Her main
goal is to create art that
makes people smile.
“When you come to my
work, I hope that there’s a
sense of playfulness and a
sense of light that you experience,” she said. “The story
I’m trying to share is one
that anybody can connect
to. It’s not for a certain category of people. It’s not for a
certain age or gender. I want
anybody to come to it and for
it to feel familiar and good.”

THEATRE

There’s no place
like home for ‘Ruby
Slippers’ production
“Ruby Slippers,” a story about
the disappearing ruby slippers
in Grand Rapids, Minnesota,
will run on Nov. 19 and 20.
BY KSENIA GORINSHTEYN
kgorinshteyn@mndaily.com

The “Wizard of Oz” is
often associated with innocence and fairytale — a
story about a girl trying to
find her way back home.
This well-known film is
about to get a makeover
with Jazzercise, an exploration of its connection to
white supremacy and stolen
ruby slippers.
“Ruby Slippers,” a creative collaboration through
the University of Minnesota
Theatre Arts and Dance
Department, explores what
happened the night Judy
Garland’s ruby slippers
were stolen from a museum
in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.
The production will run
Nov. 19 and 20.
“I was trying to find a
new story to develop and
I did a Google search of
the three … oddest things
… that have happened [in
Minnesota], and up pops this
article about these ruby slippers that were stolen from
the Judy Garland museum in
Grand Rapids, Minnesota in
2005,” said Luverne Seifert,
the director of the show and
a senior teaching specialist
in the theatre arts and dance
department.
And so the idea for “Ruby
Slippers” was born. The
show has been developed
as a creative collaboration,
a program within the department that gives everyone in the project a chance
to contribute to the show
and challenge each other’s
creative skills.
“Creative collaboration
is a class that we teach four
times a year in [the department],” Seifert said. “The
great thing about a creative

HAILEE SCHEIVELBEIN, DAILY

collaboration is you don’t
know what’s going to happen. It might be a failed experiment — we don’t know.”
The collaborators had
six weeks to write the show
and then six weeks to stage
it. They drew heavily from
the film “The Wizard of
Oz,” as well as the TV series “Fargo” because of its
focus on mystery and crime
in Minnesota. They also
tried to capture the grief
of the community in Grand
Rapids, like dialogue from
an email written by a woman
in Grand Rapids who was angry over the stolen slippers.
Emiliano Silva Izquierdo,
one of the collaborators
and a freshman majoring
in theatre arts with a concentration in performance
creation, explored the connection between the author
of the book “The Wizard
of Oz,” L. Frank Baum, and
white supremacy, and how
the connection can be culturally significant in their production of “Ruby Slippers.”
Baum advocated for the
extermination of Native
Americans and white
supremacist ideologies.
“For me, the stories that
are interesting are not to
try to recreate the tropes
of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ as
this beautiful, magical, fairytale,” Izquierdo said. “I
think it’s interesting to see
how [the movie] fits within
the history of the United
States and its cultural
imaginary.”
While their production began as a story about
the disappearance of the
ruby slippers, FBI investigators found them during

the collaborators’ creative
process. The creators then
had a plot twist they didn’t
see coming, which added to
the twists and turns in this
unique production.
“It’s kind of an adventure,” said collaborator
Tessa Dahlgren, a senior
studying theatre arts and
psychology. “We, at the
start, didn’t know where
this was going to end up.
... We’re willing to make

mistakes with each other
and that’s how we found our
best ideas.”
The collaborators hope
“Ruby Slippers” will bring
the audience laughter and
suspense, as well as grief for
a community in crisis.
“If we’re successful at
creating a suspenseful narrative, we’ve created a good
mystery for one journey of
the show. … That would be
good to see,” Seifert said.

“If we’re able to have the
sense that we’ve created a
community in despair and
that we’ve honored that … I
would also feel really great
about that.”
What: “Ruby Slippers”
When: Nov. 19 and 20, 8 p.m.
Where: Larry Liu Stage in
the Kilburn Theatre, Rarig
Center, 330 21st Ave. S.,
Minneapolis
Cost: Free

8
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2018

MN DAILY

MNDAILY.COM

Editorials & Opinions

COLUMN

CBD, artificial intelligence and
Blockchain: aren’t you sick of it?

Silicon Valley reaps rewards of
disruptive business techniques,
and we continue to pay for it.

I

n an October article
in the Minnesota Daily,
Wally’s Falafel
and Hummus
owner Wally
Sakallah detailed some ambitious plans for
the Chatime’s
storefront. ChaJONATHAN ABABIY
time would leave
columnist
for a spot near
Tim Hortons and Sakallah would launch an
innovative new coffee shop, Cosmic Bean
Dispensary. Set to open on April 20, just two
days before Earth Day, Cosmic Bean would
combine college kids’ two favorite plants:
coffee and cannabis.
Sakallah told the Daily that the aptly
named “Cosmic Bean” would serve CBD-infused coffee. He spoke as if he was describing the relationship between the ying and
yang: the caffeine will give customers energy and the CBD will help them come back
down, he said.
Those plans came back down to reality.
The Minneapolis Health Department recently told Sakallah that he would have to
sell its ying and yang separately. Infusing
CBD in drinks and food would be a “critical
violation” of the City’s food code. CBD isn’t
approved by the Food and Drug Administration yet.
Sakallah’s new business model? “Are you
making coffee with CBD in it? No, we’re not.
We’re not making coffee with the CBD. But
we’re selling CBD, and we’re selling coffee,”

he told the Daily earlier this week.
This story is funny because Sakallah’s
entrepreneurial spirit perfectly captures
our Silicon Valley-generated economic era:
disrupt and innovate now, worry about the
consequences later. Everyone is starting
something to try and create the new Uber.
Slick techies have disrupted almost every facet of our lives with apps. The stock
market is surging and new apps are coming out all the time. Words like Blockchain,
machine learning and artificial intelligence
leapt into our lexicon as if they were exhaust from Silicon Valley’s muffler. Our
government has casually stood aside and let
any smooth talker with a business idea disrupt the world. But at what cost?
One of the world’s fastest growing unicorns, or a startup worth $1 billion, makes
the cost abundantly clear. A CNBC analysis
found the 52 weeks prior to June, the electronic cigarette company Juul’s dollar sales
had risen by an astronomical 783 percent.
Despite having the shape of a flash drive,
Juul made vaping cool and quickly raked
in mountains of cash. Juul’s overexposure
blossomed into memes. Meanwhile, it was
impossible to walk anywhere in Dinkytown
in April or September without seeing small
clouds of cucumber or mango rising toward
the sky. Juul tried to disrupt vaping — and
succeeded, taking 68 percent of the market.
The sponsors of Juul’s trip of disruption
from lowly Stanford startup to billion-dollar
company are in the lungs and brain receptors of thousands of middle school, high
school and college students. The bathrooms
of educational institutions across the country turned into dens of quickly dissolving
clouds of nicotine vapor. For teachers, finding their students’ Juuls became an elaborate and difficult game of hide and seek.
No one really definitively knows the
science of Juuling yet. Scientists are still

“Are you making coffee with
CBD in it? No, we’re not.
We’re not making coffee
with the CBD. But we’re
selling CBD, and we’re
selling coffee.”
WALLY SAKALLAH
owner of Wally’s Falafel and Hummus

trying to decipher its lasting negative effects. But in the meantime, vaping has
disrupted our world. After decades of advertisements and public campaigns by antismoking advocates beat down teen-smoking
rates, nicotine has become an attractive substance to many people in the most formative
years of their lives.
The FDA is just taking serious action
this week. It announced it required Juul to
stop selling at convenience stores and discontinue its fruit flavors. But what does it
mean if thousands have experienced the
pleasures of nicotine before they’ve even
gotten their permit? No one asked them to,
but the smooth talkers in the glass towers
have disrupted the world — and gotten rich
in the process.
Maybe the balm to the stress of disruption and our newfound Juul addiction is
actually a piping hot cup of CBD coffee. Isn’t
progress good?

Jonathan Ababiy
welcomes comments at
jababiy@mndaily.com.

EDITORIAL

Citizenship does
not belong on
the US census
The U.S. census is about getting
the most accurate information
possible about all who live here.
The best argument against the U.S.
government’s move to ask a citizenship question on the next census comes from the government itself.
A trial began last week that stems from
lawsuits brought by a dozen parties, including states and cities, fighting against the
question’s inclusion. Early testimony from
a methodology expert is indicative of just
how ridiculous this issue is. She pointed out
the U.S. Census Bureau completely agrees
that the addition of the citizenship question
would reduce the accuracy of the data. And
six former census directors and a Census
Bureau internal analyst have said a citizenship question would harm the count, The
Washington Post reports.

The census is not about
proving citizenship. It’s
about getting the most accurate information possible
about the country and the
people who live here —
all people.
So our government is asking to spend
between $15.6 billion on the 2020 census and
chances are it won’t be as accurate as it could
be? Taxpayers should be outraged that such a
possibility is being proposed.
The census is not about proving citizenship. It’s about getting the most accurate information possible about the country and the
people who live here — all people. It’s a survey
that is supposed to be based on reality, not the
wishes of an administration that wants to use
information for political purposes.
When Secretary of Commerce Wilbur
Ross announced the addition of the question in
the spring, he told members of Congress it was
in response to a request from the Justice Department to better enforce the Voting Rights
Act. After lawsuits were filed in response,
the Post reports, documents released by the
government showed Ross had pushed for the
question more actively and much earlier than
he told Congress.
Of course the citizenship question is meant
to discourage participation, especially among
ethnic populations. Diminishing the voices of
the less privileged and those who aren’t citizens shouldn’t be the goal of the census.
And the census isn’t just about painting
a complete picture about our country and its
demographics. The census is a tool used to
disburse government money. States and cities
lose money if the census doesn’t reflect their
communities.
An undercount underfunds us. And that’s a
hard fact.
This editorial was originally published in
the Mankato Free Press.

EDITORIAL

Students should
be shaping their
communities
The student body must respond
to racist incidents as much as
the school administration does.
At the University of St. Thomas last
month, a student woke up to the words
“N***** Go Back” written on the door to his
dorm. This sparked not only student outrage, but also action across the campus. The
Black Empowerment Student Alliance organized a sit-in as well as an opportunity to
have a conversation with students about the
racist and discriminatory events that took
place. The University of Minnesota, and specifically our student body, should take heed
of what St. Thomas students are doing and
apply that to our own campus.
There’s often a general frustration on
campuses that develops from a university’s
response to situations students see as discriminatory or offensive. Many students feel
a university should take a stronger stance in
protecting students, while others feel their
rights could be threatened through a bolder
response.
Our student body needs to pursue more
vocal routes to effectively stand up for their
beliefs. Sitting by the wayside and hoping
a higher body intervenes will not yield results. When we feel silenced or discriminated against, it’s important we do not leave the
next steps solely in the hands of administrators. Although many in positions of power
are allies, we must do what we can as students to see immediate results.
It would be unfair to say there are no students speaking out for others and standing
up for injustice on campus, but we need to
witness higher numbers of individuals taking action as a collective community. Hundreds of students at Drake University recently rallied together to raise their voices
about incidents that were targeted toward
students of color across their campus.
There’s no reason why we cannot replicate that here in the Twin Cities. For every Facebook post or tweet about campus
speakers and bridge panels that get shared
between students, we should see students on
the ground taking action to fight for what
they believe in.
We as students should take ownership
of our student body’s response. We face an
ever-evolving social climate, so vocalizing
dissent or agreement is more important
than ever. By putting the responsibility of
assuming students’ responses into the hands
of those who work for the University of
Minnesota, we lose the opportunity to take
charge of situations that deal directly with
our community. Our voice matters in these
conversations, so let’s make it heard.
EDITORIALS & OPINIONS DEPARTMENT
Editorials represent the voice of the
Minnesota Daily as an institution and are prepared by the editorial board.

Robert McGrady welcomes comments at rmcgrady@mndaily.com.

COLUMN

Michelle Obama continues
to make the world better
The former first lady serves as an
exemplary role model of grace
and kindness for young women.

I

f you haven’t
noticed already, take
the time to look
and you will see
that Michelle
Obama’s new
memoir “Becoming” has
renewed a quiet
wave of emotion for the forUMA VENKATA
mer first lady.
columnist
I would say
there’s something about her personality that does it, but
it’s not just one thing, it’s everything.
Obama has not only flown to the highest echelons of education. She has carried
herself with grace and unfailing kindness
through eight years of marriage in a trying
presidency under a harsh limelight.
Obama went to a Whitney Young Magnet High School in Chicago and graduated
in 1981. About 30 years later, I went there
for high school during the Barack Obama
administration. And then this Monday, Michelle Obama visited Whitney Young, which
I missed by about three years.
The secret was already out about Obama
when I attended high school — there was
a bulletin board encased in glass with her
school photos, and a cardboard cutout of her
(and her beautiful smile) in our main office.
There were defunct clocks on the walls that

we joked were Obama-era. Our school was,
and I’m sure still is, a bit of a day-to-day fan
base.
Yet I didn’t fully grasp the importance of
what Obama means to women everywhere,
especially young women like myself from
the city and women of color, until I came to
the University of Minnesota. The differences
in culture and demographics between here
and Chicago were not unnoticeable. The University campus can be a bit of a fishbowl in
certain respects, but it did truly surprise me
that racial and socioeconomic diversity are
not something to take for granted.
What Obama and her husband have gone
through, for the ultimate aim of serving their
country, is no small feat. The Obamas have
withstood years of galling accusations, most
notably the birther conspiracy for Barack
Obama. And what we don’t see is sometimes
the most important. Diplomacy and calmness
have governed their behavior and there has
been no shouting match.
Michelle Obama inspires a kind of feeling
I haven’t been able to put my finger on until
now, and I think it’s gratitude. I am so grateful someone like her would take the time to
be such a perfect role model for someone like
me. When I was 15 years old and focused on
other, sillier things, I never really thought
twice about what Obama does for people like
me, because that was just the way it was. I’m
older now and I have seen more of the world.
It turns out a person like her is the kind of
person who makes the world a better place.
Uma Venkata
welcomes comments at
uvenkata@mndaily.com.

SHARE YOUR VIEWS
The Minnesota Daily welcomes letters and
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must include the writer’s name, address
and phone number for verification. The
Daily reserves the right to edit all letters
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to the editor should be no more than 500
words in length. Guest columns should
be approximately 350 words. The Daily
reserves the right to print any submission as
a letter or guest column. Submission does
not guarantee publication.

Taurus (4/20 - 5/20): Today is an 8 — Together,
anything is possible. Help your team over the next
two months with Mars in Pisces. Many hands
make light work. Pull together for common gain.

Scorpio (10/23 - 11/21): Today is an 8 —
Weave a romantic spell. Your actions speak
louder than words over the next two months with
Mars in Pisces. Your passion and creativity flower.

Gemini (5/21 - 6/21): Today is an 8 — Pour
energy into your career to push past old barriers.
Advance professionally over the next few months
with Mars in Pisces. You’re gaining respect.

Sagittarius (11/22 - 12/21): Today is a 7 — Invest
in home and family. Repair and renovate. Energize
domestic action over the next two months with
Mars in Pisces. Nurture and decorate.

Cancer (6/22 - 7/22): Today is an 8 — Explore
and learn something. You have itchy feet with
Mars in Pisces over the next two months. Open
yourself to new ideology, views and perspectives.

Capricorn (12/22 - 1/19): Today is a 9 — Get
the word out. Act for a cause. Communications
and transportation flow with greater velocity with
Mars in Pisces. Research, write and brainstorm.

Leo (7/23 - 8/22): Today is a 9 — Financial
opportunities arise over the next two months. Take
actions that profit your shared accounts with Mars
in Pisces. Collaboration provides powerful results.

Aquarius (1/20 - 2/18): Today is a 9 — The profit
potential is high. Energize your moneymaking
over the next two months with Mars in Pisces.
Avoid reckless spending, and stick to basics.

Virgo (8/23 - 9/22): Today is a 9 — Toss the
ball to a teammate. Your partnerships flower
with Mars in Pisces for two months. Strategize
and coordinate your moves. Share the load.

Pisces (2/19 - 3/20): Today is a 9 — Begin a
super-charged power phase over the next two
months with Mars in your sign. Focus on personal
development through contribution to others.

Last Issue’s Puzzle Solved

IN THE

KNOW
a podcast by

mn DAILY

Breaking
Down
the U’s
News

SUDOKU

DR. DATE
Dear Dr. Date,

My girlfriend and I have been dating since the beginning of fall semester and we are pretty much obsessed
with each other. We live on the same
ﬂ oor of our dorm, so we sleep in each
other’s rooms every night — despite
one of us almost always rolling off the
twin bed. We go to meals together, go
out on the weekends together and are
even about to sign a lease for a onebedroom apartment next week. I don’t
think we’ve spent more than a few days
apart, which was because she went
home for the weekend.
However, Christmas break is fast approaching. While I would normally be
excited to go home and see friends, the
month-long absence from the love of
my life is already eating me up inside.
Thanksgiving break should be easy. It’s
only for a few days, and I can spend my
time stuffing my face with turkey. I’m
dreading leaving school. I have nothing
to do but sit around and mourn her absence for an entire month. She lives in
Wisconsin and I’m in Minnesota. While
it’s only a state away, it feels like a continent.
I’ve tried bringing this up with her,
but she doesn’t seem too worried. She
said we can Skype throughout the day.
Meanwhile, I’m so scared of leaving her
that I’m considering sneaking on the
bus with her in a suitcase! What can I
do that doesn’t involve stowing away?

—Attached at the Hip

Dear Attached at the Hip,

While your love is sweet, it’s also
very worrying. It seems like you might
have some problems beyond just loving
your girlfriend too much. Attachment issues are a real thing. What are you going to do next summer?!
When it comes to winter break, your
girlfriend is right: Skype is a godsend.
You probably know one or two people at
college in a long-distance relationship,
so ask them how they connect with
their signiﬁcant other. Trust me, people
who date someone far away become
experts at literal online dating. Even if
you can’t be physically together, phone

calls and online movie dates make a
difference.
If the distance is really killing you,
Wisconsin isn’t too far of a drive — surprise her with a visit for a few days. It
will give you an opportunity to meet the
parents, which is probably a good idea
considering you’ll be moving in with
her. Treat this as a practice for summer
break and cross your ﬁ ngers that she
doesn’t get an internship across the
country. Happy FaceTiming!

—Dr. Date

Dear Dr. Date,

I’ve been dating my signiﬁcant other
for almost a year now. We are really
good together, we even have plans to
move in together this spring. The only
thing is, I’m crazy-big on loving people.
Friends, family, that nice lady at the
KwikTrip — I just have a big heart. But
my guy is more chill, and I feel like I put
way more effort into the relationship.
We’ve talked about it, and he agrees
— but then we don’t know where to go
from there. Is my heart too big, or is his
too small?

—People Person

Dear People Person,

You said it yourself: You two are really good together. I don’t think either
of you have different amounts of love
for one another, you most likely show
it in different ways. While your actions
may be more extreme and his low-key,
as long as you both recognize the way
you express it, this shouldn’t be a major problem. If it’s really bugging you,
ask him to speak your love language
— maybe he can plan special dates or
show more physical affection. Keep encouraging each other to communicate
and the only thing you’ll have to worry
about is what curtains to hang for your
new place.

Complete the grid so each row, column and 3-by-3 box (in bold borders) contains every digit 1 to 9.
For strategies on how to solve sudoku, visit sudoku.org.uk.